For the next few weeks “Picture in Time” is returning to what is now known as the Crich Tramway Village but at the time of these images was just the plain old National Tramway Museum.
The photos we’ll be included were all taken during the same visit in 1984 and this first one is of a visiting tram, a tram which will be familiar to many and had been sent to Crich in part exchange for some of those which went the other way for the Centenary celebrations in 1985. It is of course Blackpool Balloon 710.
This is a tram which to many enthusiasts probably needs very little introduction, although at the time of its visit to Crich it hadn’t entered television folklore as it would five years later in 1989 when it was the tram that killed Alan Bradley in Coronation Street! At this time it was really just another of the Balloon cars and would be at Crich in 1984 and 1985.
As well as seeing 710 in this photo we also see a much less developed Crich. The Bowes Lyon Bridge is still under reconstruction (although there still seem to be a couple of people on top viewing the scene) and whereas we’re used to street track on setts here there is open track in front of 710 as it approaches the camera on the way down to Town End.
Photograph by Peter Gough, 1984